Thousands of Islamists rallied in Cairo on Friday in support of calls by Sunni Muslim clerics for a holy war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The demonstration took place outside a mosque where Saudi preacher Mohammed al-Oreifi called in a sermon for a “jihad in the cause of Allah in Syria”, the AFP news agency reported.

Oreifi urged worshippers to “unite against their enemy.”

Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, is an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country, and Sunnis are the backbone of the revolt against Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Demonstrators, most of them bearded and wearing the traditional white galabiya, shouted “there is no God but Allah, and Bashar is his enemy”, according to AFP.

On Thursday, influential Sunni clerics from several Arab states called for a holy war against the “sectarian” regime in Syria.

“We must undertake jihad to help our brothers in Syria by sending them money and arms, and providing all aid to save the Syrian people from this sectarian regime,” they said in a statement at the end of a gathering in Cairo.